Friday, September 14, 2018

Monarchs and More!

Hello Friends!

We have had an amazing couple of weeks in our class. It felt really good to have a shortened week last week, they seemed to really appreciate the extra break and shortened workload.

We have been practicing our work at literacy time, doing some free writing as well as practicing read-to-self time and learning how to pick out "good fit" books to read. We have been building a class puzzle, talking about who they are using the words "I am". We are going to put the puzzle together and put together all of our parts to create the "We Are". I am so excited to see how it turns out! We are also starting to fill out our "Big 4" poster to think about what our school-wide expectations mean to our class and how we interpret them.

Also, in regards to our class culture, we have talked a lot about our personal responsibilities to ourselves as well as to others around us. For instance, it is my number one job to keep the children in my class safe. It is also all of our jobs to keep each other safe.

A quick related story: My wife has started a new job as the afterschool pre-k CC person at Doty school in Worcester and the other night we were talking about our day and she asked, "What is this thing about line-up?" It's funny, because I had never thought about it. After thinking about it for a bit, I thought about what line-up means. To mean it includes the skills of body space, safety and awareness, patience, negotiation, compromise, following expectations about volume, and so much more. In a sense, it encompasses many of the skills we are trying to help our kids learn throughout the day. I am trying to impress upon the kids that by demonstrating these skills and showing that we can help our friends follow them as well, many fun and exciting doors will open in our classroom.

Thanks to our friends in and out of school, we have the privilege to raise 3 monarch butterflies. All three are in chrysalises and should be hatching in the coming weeks. I can't wait to see their faces when the metamorphosis is complete! We will release them outside after they hatch. I'll try to take pictures to capture the event!

Watching the Metamorphosis!

It was great to see all of you at Curriculum Night. I hope you all got the details and answer to questions you may have been looking for. If not, feel free to get in touch and I'll help clear up your questions as best I can.

We have started a classroom library sign-out. The kids are allowed to sign out two books from our class library. They developed a great system. The reason for it is because there were some kiddos who were having a tough time picking out "good fit" books to read at literacy and were instead choosing books that were not. We talked about how it is important for them to read good-fit books while at school and that home may be a better place for the books that they may not be ready for yet. They, of course, are allowed to sign out good fit books to bring home as well. I'll be in touch to send a reminder if the books stay out for too long (1 week or so).

Phew. That's it for now.

See you at the fair!

~B